Pierre Nantel

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands for her question.

It is very sad to see an experienced and eloquent person, like the witness she quoted, be completely ignored. That is exactly what the NDP is referring to when we say that the government does not listen, and the Green Party clearly agrees.

These people have their agenda and a one-track mind. We cannot support a bill like this because it is too little too late.

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

I used to work in communications and media relations, so I can tell the Conservatives that this is what I see as their biggest problem. They march in authoritatively with their solutions, as though they had divine power and knew everything. They refuse to listen to suggestions from others and disregard what witnesses have to say. That is what is most pathetic.

We cannot support a government that asks for our trust, when history has shown that it has duped us on many occasions.

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, on days like today it is discouraging to listen to what our adversaries opposite have to say. That just cannot be.

I am very disappointed, but not surprised by this government's approach, which is unproductive, indifferent and unfocused and whose failings have been laid bare. Today, the government is on the defensive because of its indifference. It is very evident this morning. Amendments put forward by the NDP included mandatory harassment training for RCMP members, a civilian body to investigate complaints against the RCMP, and an independent review body to avoid police investigating police. All these amendments were very reasonable and in keeping with what the many witnesses said. All these amendments were rejected.

Contrary to the recommendations in the O'Connor report on the Maher Arar case and the many witnesses who appeared before the committee, the government rejected the amendments and continues to favour an internal, perhaps even arbitrary, approach at the RCMP, as we would unfortunately expect, rather than an independent, external and transparent approach.

Unfortunately, Bill C-42 will not resolve the very serious problems that will continue to plague the RCMP. In the meantime, many people will suffer. We are obviously thinking of the women who experience sexual harassment.

Therefore, it is with great regret that we must oppose this bill for all the reasons mentioned and especially because of the lack of transparency and the government's blinkered approach to official opposition amendments.

The people in my riding of Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher sometimes ask me whether I am fed up with Conservatives' behaviour. Of course we are fed up. We cannot take any more of this closed-mindedness, this sense of divine authority and omniscience, the way the Conservatives do not want to listen to and consider other points of view, the bad faith. We are fed up with how the Conservatives always make their ideological agenda a priority, but especially with how, particularly lately, they are always using the buzzword “transparency” and talking about accountability when they are the champions of silence, the champions of working behind closed doors.

I cannot help but see something that is very suspicious in the Conservatives' attitude. What are they hiding by always calling for transparency and officially talking about accountability, when they have an agenda that they will never reveal?

This is very disappointing for us, particularly for those of my colleagues who have been asking for reforms for a long time, such as the member who is sitting right beside me. It seems that we are still working on the issue of harassment within the RCMP. The NDP has been asking the government for ages to take care of this situation, which affects many people, particularly women. It is a governance problem within the RCMP, a problem with the internal culture.

The bill that the government put forward is not a solution at all. We were hoping for a proactive approach and a strategy to prevent these regrettable situations from happening again, but unfortunately, the outcome we are seeing today is a dry, disciplinary, impersonal and ill-considered bill in which the word harassment appears only once. It is unbelievable. As I was saying earlier, although the amendments we proposed in committee were very positive, they were rejected, and the opinions of many witnesses and experts were ignored.

Once again, as is often the case, the Conservatives took a serious, systemic problem affecting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and addressed it in a simplistic and—quite frankly—lazy manner. What is needed today to change the RCMP and reassure the public is a major change to the culture of this organization, something that this bill does not allow for. On the contrary, in a few years, we will once again be faced with the same problem because harassment will continue to be a serious problem within the organization. This bill does not reassure Canadians that their formal complaints will be examined with the attention they deserve.

Robert Paulson, Commissioner of the RCMP, has repeatedly said that a cultural change is needed. He said the following before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women:

It's the culture of the organization that has not kept pace... We haven't been able to change our practices and our policies...

[T]he problem is bigger than simply the sexual harassment.

David Brown, who led a working group on the issue in 2007 at the request of the federal government, also said the same thing. The name of that group was the Task Force on Governance and Cultural Change in the RCMP. It could not be clearer than that.

And yet rather than a real change of culture on the inside and outside, through unambiguous leadership and listening on the part of the minister’s office, we have been treated instead to a sort of “light reform”, which ultimately will do nothing to solve the fundamental problems we have been raising in the House for several months now, if not several years. It will do nothing to change the problems that have brought us to where we are and that this bill is supposedly intended to solve.

The system proposed in this bill for investigating the police completely fails to meet the test of logic and common sense. Bill C-38, which was cloned to produce the bill that is before us today, had provided that the RCMP would investigate itself in certain cases.

The strange structure we are presented with in this bill provides that in the case of serious incidents involving the RCMP—deaths and serious injuries—the provinces will step in and assign the investigation to an investigative body or police service. Otherwise, the RCMP may assign the investigation to another police service, and if that option is not available, the RCMP will carry out the investigation itself.

This means that the job of overseeing the RCMP is assigned in the first instance to provincial bodies, in spite of the fact that such bodies exist in only four provinces: British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Ultimately, and unfortunately, oversight of the RCMP is too often shifted to the provinces. This amounts to the federal government abdicating its responsibility and once again downloading the federal government’s costs onto the provinces.

I thought that the Conservatives wanted to reduce the size of government, since they told us they did, but that cannot mean that responsibility for the oversight of federal institutions has to be shifted to the provinces.

We are opposed to this Byzantine system because it can be simpler and more effective. We tried to do this through an amendment in committee, proposing that a national, independent civilian group be created that would systematically handle this and report to Parliament. Obviously, that amendment was rejected. We have to put an end to this system of the police investigating the police. Even the mayors of some municipalities are opposed to it.

We made proposals here and in committee to that effect. Our amendments and the recommendations from reports, task forces, commissions and witnesses have been waved off by a government that is running headlong toward disaster. Its stubborn insistence on doing nothing of any real effect is astounding, and we find it particularly tiresome.

The bill before us is also an abdication of the minister’s responsibilities. The proposal to significantly increase the powers of the commissioner of the RCMP amounts to running toward the nearest exit; it is the easy solution.

This is another abdication: the government should have led the charge against harassment inside the RCMP with a vigorous reform. Instead it is choosing to set up and endorse a system that massively increases the commissioner's powers, in the hope that this will change something.

All the witnesses and experts who are familiar with this issue say that we do not need more powers concentrated in the hands of a single person and that what we really need is a new system of transparency and independent oversight.

The Task Force on Governance and Cultural Change in the RCMP, which the government created in 2007, had another idea in mind. It proposed reforms that would bring the RCMP into line with the internal governance methods and structures used in civilian bodies, with a board of management that would oversee and could challenge decisions of the commissioner, that would require accountability, that could hear complaints from employees and that would exist within a transparent structure.

Unfortunately, what the government is proposing is, once again, the complete opposite. Clearly, the solution in this bill, which is to put more powers than ever in the hands of a single person, when what is needed is to overcome an organizational problem, will solve nothing. In fact, it may well create more internal problems and discontent.

This is a clash between two different philosophies. When the Conservatives are faced with a complex problem, they propose more powers in the hands of a single person, more order, more hierarchy, more unchallengeable or arbitrary decisions and more discipline. When we look at the same problem, we call for a system that is structured, transparent, well thought-out and systematic and that will act in the public interest and respect the rights of RCMP members, certainly, but most importantly the rights of the public.

In this bill, what the Conservatives are proposing is unprecedented: an enormous reform that will replace the existing commission that examines complaints against the RCMP and reports its findings to the minister with a commission that will examine complaints against the RCMP and report its findings to the minister. That is very impressive.

In conclusion, the people in my riding are not taken in by this kind of obsession with the rhetoric of transparency and accountability, and they hope that we are going to oppose this sham as long as we can.

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, February 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member on his wonderful speech. Once again, he is an inspiration when it comes to speaking from the heart and representing his constituents' opinions.

I could not help but think of some of my constituents who are part of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and who are very disappointed with this bill. They are wondering when we will evolve.

The women who were victims of harassment must be bitterly disappointed in the government's lack of intervention and its inaction with this bill. What does my colleague think?

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to congratulate my colleague on his speech. He spoke very convincingly and pushed the envelope by stressing environmental considerations and the future, something we as parliamentarians need to bear in mind. We have a duty to think about future generations. There is no question that infrastructure and public transit systems help leave a better legacy for our youth.

Does my colleague not agree with me that, sadly, having long-term vision is much too much to ask of short-sighted people like some of the members opposite?

[Business of Supply, February 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my Conservative colleague from Essex, and I sometimes have the impression—I am surprised to say it—that he is wearing rose-coloured glasses.

He can cherry-pick the success stories about municipal infrastructure all he wants, but the reality is that most municipalities are at the end of their rope. The most recent assessment pegs the infrastructure deficit at $171 billion.

Can the member finally tell us if the government will commit to holding real dialogue with municipalities and consulting them? I believe that is difficult for the Conservatives.

[Employment Insurance, February 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we can also talk about cities.

People in the cultural sector are sometimes unemployed between contracts and occasionally have to claim employment insurance benefits.

Thirty-five thousand people in Quebec and 132,000 people in Canada make a living from the cultural industry. For example, Toronto composer Mychael Danna, who won an Oscar last night for his music in Life of Pi, has a job in the cultural industry. The same is true of artistic director Jim Erickson, from Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, who also won an Oscar for his set decoration in Lincoln.

With the EI reform, the Conservatives will force film industry workers to change jobs.

Why threaten our film industry?

[CBC and Public Service Disclosure and Transparency Act, February 12th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but think of the French-speaking community in my colleague's riding, which relies heavily on Radio-Canada. I wonder whether they were consulted.

I rise in the House today to condemn what can only be seen, despite a devious facade, as an attack against public broadcasting and programming. It is an attack against the work CBC journalists do, against free, politically independent journalism.

I respectfully ask my colleagues to resist the lure of the bill's misleading title. It is a sham. This bill is not about transparency. Its real goal is a long-standing, political goal: to undermine the CBC and public broadcasting in our country. Yet that tradition is at the very heart of our culture.

In fact, the bill really is about the government's Reform roots and their unrelenting attacks on the CBC. It is about a pathological anger against public radio and TV that has obsessed and tormented some people for 25 or 30 years. It is about an unhealthy obsession with the CBC, although that affliction is very rare among the people I meet on the street.

Just admit it. The truth is that no one in the House dislikes or even detests the CBC as much as the members opposite. I am tempted to tell them to get over it. Their problem is that they are going it alone with this personal mini crusade. They do not have the support of the 78% of Canadians who, according to an Angus Reid poll, believe that the CBC fulfills its mandate, or of the 59% of us who would like the CBC's funding to be at least maintained or perhaps increased.

Our colleague from Edmonton—St. Albert is up against an overwhelming majority of Canadians who oppose the destruction of the CBC. Therefore, I will say to that MP, who has an axe to grind, that he is quite alone.

I believe that this bill does absolutely nothing for transparency. This bill is coming out of left field today. The CBC is known as a model of transparency and access to information.

With regard to transparency, it received an A in 2012. I am not the one saying so. The Information Commissioner ranked the CBC among the best public organizations for transparency. According to her report, it sets an excellent example.

At this time, anyone can ask for internal CBC information about expenditures in various areas.

If the CBC refuses the request, which happens in 4.2% of the cases, the person can refer the matter to the Information Commissioner, who determines if the information request pertains to sensitive matters such as the work of journalists, who must protect their sources.

That is the current system. It is a system of exemptions based on the international standard for information requests that gives the Information Commissioner the right to examine information that the CBC wants to protect. It is a system that works, that was voted on in the House in 2006, that we supported at the time, that was enhanced by the federal court and that was approved by all stakeholders. The Information Commissioner is satisfied, the CBC is satisfied, everyone is satisfied, except for those who are just entering the debate. We suspect that the Conservatives are actually not very interested in the real issue of transparency. That is another excuse, another opportunity to weaken the CBC's presence.

We have reason to worry about the work of journalists and the protection of their sources. Currently, the CBC is protected, excluded from disclosing information about its journalistic, programming or creative activities. This same system is in place for public broadcasters in other parts of the world such as Ireland, Australia and the BBC in Great Britain.

This protection is based on an international standard and allows the CBC to carry out its public mandate by being a competitive player in the media environment, in a way that is transparent to taxpayers. Above all, it is a way of ensuring that journalists' work will not be compromised or the confidentiality of their sources questioned.

Bill C-461 proposes that we dismantle this system that was created by Parliament and clarified by the courts. It proposes that the exclusion should become an exception so that the CBC would have to prove that disclosure could reasonably be expected to prejudice the corporation’s journalistic, creative or programming independence.

One has to wonder who will benefit from this bill. Certainly not the public, given that virtually all access to information requests made to the CBC come from its competitors.

This is a bill that is tailor-made to benefit the CBC's competition. And that competition is cozy with the Conservative Party, so cozy that a person can move easily from the Prime Minister's Office to the vice-presidency of the private network that is the most maliciously and exceedingly critical of the CBC. And that is not just by chance.

This bill sets out to expose the CBC to its competition in order to weaken it and eventually eliminate it.

In terms of protecting sources—and this is even worse—the CBC will have to argue why journalistic research, including confidential sources that allow employees to do investigative work, should not be made public. Generally speaking, that is a given.

Once again, it has to be “reasonably” proven, and I want to emphasize “reasonably”, that the journalistic process will be affected. The Supreme Court spoke about the public interest in preserving the confidentiality of the journalist's source and “the high societal interest in investigative journalism”.

Do not forget that Reporters Without Borders recently dropped Canada from 10th to 20th place in its annual press freedom index. That is not something this government can be proud of. Reporters Without Borders noted the continuing threats to the confidentiality of journalists’ sources as the reason for the downgrade.

Another aspect of the bill before us is the amendment of the Access to Information Act so that the salaries of some government employees can be subject to access to information requests. There is something fishy going on here too. To be quite honest, it is actually more of a whale of a problem. The vocabulary used in the bill seems to be tailored so that our colleague's insatiable curiosity, about some CBC celebrities, including Peter Mansbridge and Rick Mercer, which he mentioned earlier, can be satisfied.

In the past, the hon. member for Edmonton—St. Albert even took the time here in the House to ask about their salaries in particular. The hon. member for Jeanne-Le Ber saw first-hand that, when we ask exactly the same question about the salaries of the little army of goblins working for the Prime Minister's Office in the Langevin Block, we do not get an answer. What a surprise. Oddly enough, that is how it usually works.

Since the Conservatives want to talk about transparency, let us talk about it. While the CBC received an A for its transparency, last year, the Information Commissioner gave the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Transport Canada an F.

Does the hon. member for Edmonton—St. Albert have a position on this issue? Does he want to share his concerns with us or would he prefer to focus only on the CBC? Does that suit him?

The Information Commissioner must now go before the Federal Court to call to order the Department of National Defence, which has been asking for extensions for responding to access to information requests for over three years.

The Conservatives are being totally outdone by the CBC when it comes to public transparency rankings; yet, they are finding a way to attack it.

That would give Sigmund Freud something to analyze. It is odd.

The day before yesterday, on CBC, the Information Commissioner said that the current Conservative government is not one of the most transparent—this understatement was indicative of her duty of deference—and that the response rate for access to information requests had reached record lows.

She said that Canadians should be outraged. This is where we have a problem. In 2006, the Conservative Party took office under the banner of accountability. Now there is a tale to remember. Their focus on accountability was, hon. members will remember, in direct response to the sponsorship scandals. It is strange to think about the word “accountability” today.

We just celebrated the seventh anniversary of this government. Today, after seven years, we can honestly say that this government is the least transparent and has caused the most scandals in Canadian history.

The member for Edmonton—St. Albert belongs to a government that preaches transparency, that expects it from everyone but itself. From its seat in Ottawa, the government spends billions of dollars on a whim and then demands accountability from aboriginal communities, labour associations, anyone but itself.

Today it has set its sights on the CBC, which it surely finds inconvenient. Transparency is a piece of cake when it is demanded of others. Transparency is increasingly being used as a way to launch stealth attacks against the right's targets of choice; this needs to stop.

We demand transparency. The NDP demands transparency right here, right now. After seven years, it is about time the government itself showed some transparency.

All of this brings us to the realization that the bill we have before us has more to do with the disgust that some feel for public radio and television than with a sincere ethical concern. This is but another salvo in what the Canadian Media Guild has dubbed “a dirty war against the CBC”.

I recently began personally measuring people's attachment to their public broadcaster. On January 23, at the Lion d'Or, in Montreal, individuals and creators from all walks of life gathered to attest to the cultural importance of the CBC.

After some consideration, I have come to realize that the things that members across the way have been saying about the CBC represent a marginal opinion and quite simply contradict the mainstream impression of our public broadcaster; what is more, it seems their arguments mostly do not hold water.

The majority of Canadians who, like us, are in favour of an independent public broadcaster free of political leanings have no doubts as to what is going on tonight. This majority wants our public broadcaster to stay independent and transparent and keep reflecting our national creativity.

[CBC and Public Service Disclosure and Transparency Act, February 12th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I must say that I am amazed by the kind of words we are hearing. We heard “transparency”, “sunlight” and “best disinfectant”. How lovely.

The Conservatives can hide under the veil of transparency all they want, but this bill is clearly obsolete and comes at a time when the crisis is over. The CBC received an A rating not too long ago. This same member said in 2011 that he did not see why Canada needed a public broadcaster.

It is all well and good to praise Rick Mercer, but why is this coming at a time when the CBC just received an A rating from the commissioner?

[Employment Insurance, February 5th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the problem comes down to the fact that the minister did not consult people in resource regions where the economy depends on seasonal employment. Nor did she consult with people in cities. A reform, she calls it! No, it is a direct attack on workers everywhere.

Another example is that a large majority of workers in the cultural industries such as television, film and music are freelancers who have to turn to employment insurance from time to time. They are what she calls frequent claimants, or, as she actually likes to say, “bad guys”.

Why has the minister chosen to ignore the reality of workers in cultural industries?